Well, my daughter got her driver’s license and has started driving her 77 Maverick. Day two she hits a pot hole and puts two beautiful flat spots on the right front rim!! Now, imagine my surprise when I discover that the rim is a 14x4.5. I had no idea they were that skinny! So, first question is can a rim be straightened? Second question, has anyone had any luck finding these in a junkyard? Thanks
Its great your daughter is interested in driving such an old car. Mine is 15 with a permit but would rather sit in passenger seat. Just get her 4 new 15inch wheels of her choice with new tire and be done.
14x4.5 does seem narrow for OEM. 14x6 might be more likely although they certainly could have been changed over the years. A 14 inch 5 lug Mustang wheel up to 1973 might get you what you need. I believe by 77 all Mavericks were 5 lug. Should be plenty of those around. CJ Pony Parts probably has new ones. Others with more experience might correct me. Best wishes.
The 14 x 4.5 is a very easy one to find as it came on many of the cars. I would not try to straighten yours, just post a wanted ad in the classifieds. You will find one. If you do look for other wheels - the foreign cars often used the same bolt pattern. The 5x4.5 pattern is also a metric 5x114.3 (often just called 5x114)
I'd check the yards in your area. It is possible to find one. Doubtful it's worth fixing as finding a good wheelwright is hard these days. Kind of a lost art. Shame you live so far away as I have an extra stock rim. One site that I've had much luck finding parts over the years is www.car-part.com . It is an online national index of yards that list their inventory by location, year, make, model and part wanted. Mind you, not all yards subscribe to them, but you'll be pleasantly surprised how many do. If a particular part is cross indexed to fit even though it is from a different model, it will show up. Some yards won't post pricing but if they don't, they have contact info to call. It's also a very easy site to navigate through.
Then again, it's a good excuse to put a set of custom wheels (they're wheels) on it. But yeah, 14×4.5" is the OEM size...
If you are running tires wider than a 185, it would be a good idea to get wider rims. The very earliest of these cars came with very thin 82 series tires. Even the letter size tires were pretty skinny by todays standards. They weren't radial tires at first either. 195 and 205 width radial tires call for a 5-7 inch wheel. As a kid, I squeezed some 205 radials on the 4.5 wheels on the front of my first Comet and they looked "very round", the tread wasn't really flat to the road. It rode on the middle of the tread.
I had some 195/70s on 14x4.5" wheels back in high school. They sucked the sidewalls inward. Looked ridiculous...